A Very Modest Proposal
by Ryuujitsu
Summary: Ryou jumps out of a window, but all Bakura wants is a ring. Tendershipping, M for language. Just plain ridiculous.


a very modest proposal  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying the Earth's core is made of fluff and bunnies.

A/N: Totally random. When I began the story I had no idea where I was going with it. Hope you like. Rated for language, sexual situations and the like. Nothing too terrible, though. Title and a good half of the fic inspired by Telanu's "A Modest Proposal," which is Snarryfic.

-

At seventeen, Ryou had never thought he would find himself balancing precariously on a windowsill with his heels drumming against the granite facade. The wind moaned and billowed and threatened to knock him back into the office. Hair blew in his eyes; the wind sucked the breath out of him. He gripped the sill determinedly and stared down at the building-block cars and toy-soldier people, ant-sized about eighty stories below. His fingers were starting to cramp, but that was just as well. He would have to let go soon.

He was taking a moment to contemplate the annoying twinge in his elbow when the door—he hadn't locked it, had he—burst open, and shouts filled the room. _He's in here; quick! _With a wicked, wheezing giggle, the wind seized several stacks of paperwork in a particularly vicious gust and sent them flying, for which Ryou was grateful. He gave the wall another tap with his right foot and shifted his weight forward.

Kawano-san or whatever his name was gave a muffled yell through the gag and began to wriggle furiously. Ryou was fairly sure he had tied him tightly enough.

More shouting, footsteps. Whole folders erupted and belched their contents into the air. Paperclips rained down. It was probably time to leave. Ryou pressed both feet against the wall and let go.

Yami was the second into the room, the first having tripped over the bound and gagged Kawano. He leapt over both bodies and went straight to the window, shoving his head out in time to catch a glimpse of a rapidly-falling white speck.

It wouldn't hurt to scream, so he did, and loudly. "_Damn_ it, Bakura!"

-

Ryou waited until the fifteenth story window was in sight. He hit an unexpected updraft. Upside down for a moment, he whipped out a card and the wind whipped it immediately away. His pockets voided themselves, possibly out of fear. The Flying Kamakiri escaped from his grasping hands and vanished swiftly upward.

"Shite!" Seventh story; he groped frantically for another. He'd bought that card specifically for the occasion, but that was alright, he could afford to improvise, at least for a few more seconds. "Earthbound Spirit!"

He caught the solemn gaze of a three-year-old as he passed a fourth story window, and then the fiend's grimy hands shot up around him, pulled him down. There was a snarl; the earth swallowed him up. Heat and darkness; he drew another card and closed his eyes.

-

"You stupid sodding son of a bitch _arsehole_," said Bakura when he opened the apartment door. Ryou was covered from head to toe in rich black soot; his clothes were tattered in places. He made his way to the living room sofa and collapsed across it, wiping the back of a hand across his mouth and managing to drag more dirt along the sofa as he did so. Bakura let out a screech.

"My elbow hurts," said Ryou.

Bakura squatted beside him. "You look like you've been dragged over rocks," he said, making a show of not inhaling.

Ryou gave him a vaguely hurt look. "I have," he said. Even his teeth were sooty. "I believe we broke through the water table at several spots. You can breathe," he added, not unkindly. He rubbed at his mouth again. One eyebrow was more gray than black; Bakura wondered how that had happened. "It's not carcinogenic."

"Never," said Bakura, who was slowly turning purple.

-

When they washed Ryou in the bathtub, they found several dark bruises on his knees and shoulders and spine, and a more greenish one on his jaw. The water had turned black two times already; Ryou, caught somewhere between charcoal-gray and ash-gray, stood shivering, spotted, and naked in the corner while Bakura drained and refilled the bath.

Bakura jerked his head toward the water. Soot clung in a fine black line around the eddies.

Ryou sank into the bath, exclaimed at the cold, and began shivering more violently. "You wanker," he said through chattering teeth. His skin was reddening under the gray, from cold and from rubbing. He scrubbed at his thighs, then at his mouth.

Bakura ignored him; he was rummaging through his clothes with the very tips of his fingers with a soft and eager look on his face. After a few minutes—Ryou's mouth was finally clean and growing blue at the creases—Bakura extracted a dusty black orb from one of the pockets; holding it with the edges his fingernails, he smeared the ball across Ryou's face and it became the Millennium Eye.

"Wanker," said Ryou again. He ducked his head underwater; when he emerged, it was with a kind of sob. He looked at the Eye, shining dully, cradled in the palm of Bakura's right hand. "Bakura." He could barely talk for the clicking of his teeth. "It's b-bloody cold, and I have given you a. . .a bloody g-golden eye. Marry m-me." He was having difficulty forming a grin, his lips were trembling so.

Bakura gathered Ryou's clothes with three fingers and held them away from his body like he would a small giggling child clad entirely in baby pink. "I'm going to burn these," he announced. "Dry off before you get us sick."

-

Yuugi called around dinner time. Bakura had disappeared, but a thick and ominous haze was filtering gradually into the living room; Ryou had a suspicion that his dirty clothes and Bakura's psychosis were to blame. Ryou, standing at the kitchen counter, was shoveling food in, slurping and snuffling in his haste to fill the aching hollow in his middle. Being dragged underground could do that to you, probably. He had put three packets of cheap and spicy seasoning into the ramen; his tongue burned.

"Pegasus is going to need that back, you know," Yuugi said.

Ryou swallowed hard and felt the lump traveling down. "I need it right now," he said. His nose stung, unexpectedly. No doubt from the chilies, or the pungent fog that was beginning to seep into the kitchen. "I need it for something. It's important. I'll bring it back."

Yuugi hemmed. His harrumphs were improving, Ryou thought; he was borderline pompous, now, not quite 'pompous bastard.' "Make it soon. Pegasus finds it 'most unbecoming.' His hotel room is 'unbecoming.' His hair is 'unbecoming.' His empty eye socket is 'unbecoming.' His attitude is transforming Yami into something 'unbecoming.' Anyway, I don't think Bakura will be very happy to part with the Eye."

"He'll have to," said Ryou, casting a dark look at the smoke curling around his ankles. It shrank back like a beaten dog; Ryou had been practicing his glares. Then he sneezed violently and ruined the effect. "I'll bring it back soon, but it's important. Sorry." He hung up and went to find Bakura as the fog continued to ooze toward the refrigerator.

-

"I asked you a question," said Ryou.

Bakura gave a thoroughly unconvincing snore and rolled onto his left side. The lamplight caught him across the face and deepened the shadow between his frowning lips. Ryou felt daring; not, of course, as daring as he had felt when he had leapt out the building earlier in the day, but what the hell. He put out the lamp, put his mouth to Bakura's ear, and bit down softly.

With total disregard for his nerve endings, Bakura wrenched the fleshier part of his ear away from Ryou's canines and sat up, looking disgruntled. "Treachery," he muttered. "And you didn't."

Ryou smiled, desperately. "Alright, a statement, then. I made a statement. I stand by that statement, and I want an answer from you."

"You can't answer statements." Bakura was going to be a prick about this; he really was, wasn't he—he ought to know better.

His mouth was shaking again, dammit. "Don't be an arse. Then I want you to _respond_ to my statement. I jumped out a window for you today, and I'd really like you to bloody _respond _to my statement."

"Sod off."

Ryou wasn't done. He clambered to the other side of the bed, found Bakura's face in the dark and slammed his fist into it, then dove in and kissed the bleeding nose, kissed blood from the chin, slid his mouth everywhere looking for Bakura's. "Two hundred words at least," he gasped, "or I won't accept it, do you get that, you sodding—_gnh_. . ."

Bakura had grabbed him by the jaw. He pushed Ryou against the headboard and proceeded to chew his earlobes to a bloody pulp. When Bakura let off to take a breath—he exhaled hot and slow and it slid down Ryou's neck and made him shudder—Ryou kneed him in the gut, followed it up with an elbow, and found himself on the floor.

"There's your fucking response," said Bakura.

-

Ryou spent an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom the next morning, picking dried blood out of his hair. He took another ten minutes to blink at his reflection in the mirror. He looked down at his chest and at the Ring, then went for the kitchen. There was an odd hum in his ears. He felt lightheaded.

Bakura was cleaning busily, mopping at the black ooze still spotting the tiles. He looked more neurotic than usual, was faintly green around the cheekbones and biting his lips; there was blood caked around his nose, which was swollen and twice its usual size. His eyes were red.

"Bakura," Ryou said. He ripped the Ring away from his neck and threw it onto the table, and sat down. "Bakura, just listen. You are a fucking girl. Is this what it's all about? You want a fucking ring? I committed six felonies yesterday. I ripped an eyeball out of someone's skull and dove out an eightieth story window and tunneled beneath Domino City and endangered my immortal soul; you are holding the fucking Millennium Eye in your pocket and you want a fucking ring?"

Bakura mopped jerkily. Ryou went on brutally. "I asked you a week ago and it was like a wall came up between us! And now, do you mean to say that you haven't kissed me in days and you tried to eat my ears last night because you wanted a ring?"

Bakura exploded. "Would you stop fucking around? All this shite about being bound together, as if we aren't already! Ring? Ring? We already have a fucking Ring! We—you—" he spluttered at the look in Ryou's eyes "—you can't possibly be serio—you're—oh, Embalmer, you're—_what do you think you're doing?_"

Ryou had plunged his hands into Bakura's pockets and removed the Millennium Eye. Bakura stood frozen, mouthing like a fish while Ryou wrenched open a window and hurled the Eye out into the city below. Bakura looked shell-shocked. The blood drained from his face.

Ryou took the Ring and put it around Bakura's neck, and kissed the corner of the spirit's opened mouth and pressed the palm of his hand against the gold.

"I know what I want," he said quietly, "and here's a ring. My knees are bruised and shorn to pieces from yesterday; please don't make me kneel. Marry me. Will you marry me?" He laughed, a bit shakily. "That's a question, you know. I expect an answer. Non-verbal works."

Bakura shook himself from his paralysis with a convulsive effort. He dropped the mop and kicked it into a corner, grabbed Ryou by the shoulders and shoved him against the refrigerator.

"You threw it out the window," he snarled. "I can't _believe_ you, you pathetic little attention-starved—if that's all you wanted from me—you—" And then he kissed him.

Ryou tangled the Ring around them, wrapped an arm around Bakura and closed his eyes. Pegasus could deal with an empty eye socket and Yami could deal with Pegasus; this was important.

-

A/N: Never mind that this situation is entirely improbable and that Bakura and Ryou are wildly OOC. I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it, at least. With luck, Faust12 will be up by the holidays.

Thanks for reading!


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